University of Iowa provost finalist once helped in UI search for provost

Margaret Raymond eyeing a return to Iowa City

University of Iowa has unveiled University of Wisconsin Law School Dean Margaret Raymond as the second of four finalists to become the next UI executive vice president and provost. Raymond is on the Iowa City campus Monday and Tuesday for a series of meetings and tours and a Monday afternoon public forum in the Iowa Memorial Union.
(Provided by University of Iowa)

IOWA CITY — A former University of Iowa law professor who served as president of the UI Faculty Senate in the early 2000s, helped found the Iowa City Police Citizens Review Board in the late 1990s, and assisted in hiring a UI provost about a decade ago is now — herself — a candidate for that post.

UI administrators over the weekend unveiled University of Wisconsin Law School Dean Margaret Raymond as the second of four finalists to become the next UI executive vice president and provost. Raymond is on the Iowa City campus Monday and Tuesday for a series of meetings and tours and a Monday afternoon public forum in the Iowa Memorial Union.

The first named finalist, University of Pittsburgh Executive Vice Provost David N. DeJong, visited campus Jan. 16 and 17. A third is scheduled to visit Thursday, meaning his or her name will become public Wednesday. A fourth finalist is scheduled to come Feb. 7.

Raymond, who was educated at Carleton College in Minnesota and Columbia University School of Law, clerked for Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall before eventually landing a UI associate law professorship in 1995, according to her curriculum vitae.

She moved up to full professor status in 1999 before taking the job in 2011 as Wisconsin’s Fred W. & Vi Miller law school dean and professor. During her tenure there, according to Raymond’s resume, she led the law school through “historically unprecedented downturn in applications, sustaining excellence, reputation and student access.”

“Through creative, team-driven leadership, engagement with stakeholders, and collaboration with institutional partners,” Raymond said she steered a course through a “five-year national downturn in law school applications while sustaining student quality and diversity, strategically adding excellent faculty hires, controlling student debt, and improving student services and employment outcomes.”

Iowa’s College of Law also endured the enrollment depression, with its dean in December 2013 requesting a rare 16.4 percent tuition cut for resident and non-resident law students. That generated some success in stabilizing enrollment by increasing slightly both total and incoming class sizes.

In this period of rabid competition and waning resources, Raymond in her resume boasted improving the law school’s U.S. News & World Report ranking from 35 to 27 and “radically” boosting donor contacts, raising $34 million toward a 2020 fundraising campaign — or 97 percent of the goal.

While a UI professor for more than 15 years, Raymond reported serving on many governance, rules, and search committees — including the one for provost and executive vice president in 2007 and 2008. She also was appointed by the UI president in 2002 and 2003 to chair an investigative committee on the UI response to sexual assault allegations against a student-athlete.

Former UI College of Law Dean Gail Agrawal is co-chairing the current search for a new UI provost — a position that has been open since Barry Butler left in March 2017, almost two years ago. Former College of Public Health Dean Sue Curry has been serving as interim ever since.